Some interesting industry news for you here. Epic Games have announced a change to the revenue model of the Epic Games Store, as they try to pull in more developers and more gamers to actually purchase things.
Announced in a blog post on May 1st, Epic will take a 0% store fee for the first $1 million revenue developers make per app per year. After that, it goes back to their normal 88%/12% split.
Interestingly, this seems to be an expansion of their Epic First Run program they launched back in 2023. For that though, developers had to be exclusive for at least six month. Seems this simply wasn't good enough, so now all developers will get it.
Not surprising they're doing this, when you see how player spending on third-party games on the Epic Games Store has gone down two years in a row.
On top of that they've also announced "Webshops" to release in June 2025 that enables developers to "launch their own webshops hosted by the Epic Games Store". This seems to be mainly a target for mobile by the sounds of it as Epic say it means developers can offer "out-of-app purchases, as a more cost-effective alternative to in-app purchases, where Apple, Google, and others charge exorbitant fees". People who use the Webshops will "accrue 5% Epic Rewards on all their purchases".
This was announced only a day after a judge ruled massively in Epic's favour against Apple (The Verge).
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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ElectricPrism 12 hours ago
Epic is the temu of gaming
11 Likes
williamjcm 12 hours ago
That move reeks of desperation.
Problem is, the EGS will bleed even more money because of it, because 99.99...% of its users only care about Fortnite and the weekly free games, so no games will hit the threshold.
Problem is, the EGS will bleed even more money because of it, because 99.99...% of its users only care about Fortnite and the weekly free games, so no games will hit the threshold.
11 Likes
ContainerRunner 11 hours ago
Looks like they are getting very desperate now. This will be a big motivation for indie developers, because having 100% revenue is possible nowhere else. It could motivate some developers to move away from Itch.io (lowest fees) as their standard platform. Even the small number of developers that use self-hosting could then move to Epic to avoid the payment processing fees. Let's see how it develops.
From a customer perspective, purchases on Epic already look promising with incentives like X$ Coupons (for game purchases) and 5/10% cashbacks. Nevertheless, the client still misses soooo many features that is part of the Steam ecosystem to make it competitive.
Last edited by ContainerRunner on 2 May 2025 at 10:47 am UTC
From a customer perspective, purchases on Epic already look promising with incentives like X$ Coupons (for game purchases) and 5/10% cashbacks. Nevertheless, the client still misses soooo many features that is part of the Steam ecosystem to make it competitive.
Last edited by ContainerRunner on 2 May 2025 at 10:47 am UTC
6 Likes
Aeder 10 hours ago
How cool of you Epic. To celebrate, I'll buy myself a Steam game.
8 Likes
Ehvis 9 hours ago
And again they're sucking up to the publishers instead of catering to the people that actually provide the money.
2 Likes
lol
1 Likes
gradyvuckovic 8 hours ago
That move reeks of desperation.Literally the words that came to my brain when I read the headline.
That's the kind of thing only a company can only do if they're basically getting no traffic. They have almost no traffic, so it makes almost no difference at this point how much of a discount off revenue they offer, anything to entice people to the platform would be seen as a valid move by management.
Might be finally time for Epic to just move on and accept that EGS didn't work and it's not going to, no matter how much money they pump into it.
0 Likes
TightRope 8 hours ago
Where is the Linux support? I guess I am still out.
2 Likes
Lol at Epic they would do anything to not improve the user experience. Let's see how many users they attract with this yet another "consumer friendly" move. 
0 Likes
Termy 8 hours ago
Talk about desperate...
It baffles me that they still haven't understood that their take on "convincing the developers" only works if they manage to achieve widespread exclusivity. As this anti-consumer scheme thankfully has failed colossally, they have to understand that in order to gain traction, they have to deliver reasons for the customers to come to them.
Right now, from a consumer standpoint, there are exactly zero reasons to even consider buying a game on EGS instead of Steam or GoG. Instead, there are plenty of reasons to prefer one of the other two over EGS.
It baffles me that they still haven't understood that their take on "convincing the developers" only works if they manage to achieve widespread exclusivity. As this anti-consumer scheme thankfully has failed colossally, they have to understand that in order to gain traction, they have to deliver reasons for the customers to come to them.
Right now, from a consumer standpoint, there are exactly zero reasons to even consider buying a game on EGS instead of Steam or GoG. Instead, there are plenty of reasons to prefer one of the other two over EGS.
3 Likes
Mountain Man 7 hours ago
Now if only the Epic game store was good for something other than free games.
Last edited by Mountain Man on 2 May 2025 at 4:07 pm UTC
Last edited by Mountain Man on 2 May 2025 at 4:07 pm UTC
1 Likes
Kimyrielle 6 hours ago
This store was never meant to improve customer experience. Its only purpose was for devs to save on commissions. And people wonder why it hard failed, when there was and is zero reason for customers to use it. If Fortnite wouldn't provide a seemingly endless amount of revenue to keep it on life-support, EPIC store would have closed a long time ago.
0 Likes
sonic2kk 6 hours ago
Cool for developers but I am still not interested. I am Steam-first forever, and if I wanted to buy or redeem a game twice, I would do it from Itch.io or GOG (in that order). I have no interest in the free Epic Games Store games, either.
Fuck you, Epic Games. You have ruined PC gaming forever, I still struggle to enjoy games like I used to before the Epic Games Store launched.
Fuck you, Epic Games. You have ruined PC gaming forever, I still struggle to enjoy games like I used to before the Epic Games Store launched.
0 Likes
eggrole 6 hours ago
While I understand that EGS isn't popular, as consumers we should want them to succeed. More competition and options are generally a good thing.
Steam is great (although not without flaws), but I fear that when Gabe finally retires it will become enshitified like everything else.
Personally I still buy most of my games on steam, but I always check if there is a similar deal on GOG and try to buy there when it is reasonable. Then I use heroic because IMHO all the launchers suck.
Steam is great (although not without flaws), but I fear that when Gabe finally retires it will become enshitified like everything else.
Personally I still buy most of my games on steam, but I always check if there is a similar deal on GOG and try to buy there when it is reasonable. Then I use heroic because IMHO all the launchers suck.
0 Likes
chickenb00 4 hours ago
My take on Epic's strategizing:
We need the Vampire Survivors, the Schedule 1s, the Balatros, and those flash-in-the-pan lightning-in-a-bottle indie games to come to EGS rather than Steam. We need EGS to be 'in the news' for once, rather than Steam again being the focal point of some hot new release that attracts millions of sales. How do we do that? By reducing sales cost to zero on the first $1M revenue.
Trouble is, these Vampire Survivor lightning games release on Steam because that's where the player base resides. Despite the application fee and the 30% take, it's still where you find the bulk of PC players.
I'm torn on this because while we do need competition in the PC Games Storefront scene, I don't really want a bunch of EGS exclusives that I need to sideload on my Deck or my PC. I much prefer the rich library environment of Steam games than the lacking library view of a non-Steam game shortcut.
We need the Vampire Survivors, the Schedule 1s, the Balatros, and those flash-in-the-pan lightning-in-a-bottle indie games to come to EGS rather than Steam. We need EGS to be 'in the news' for once, rather than Steam again being the focal point of some hot new release that attracts millions of sales. How do we do that? By reducing sales cost to zero on the first $1M revenue.
Trouble is, these Vampire Survivor lightning games release on Steam because that's where the player base resides. Despite the application fee and the 30% take, it's still where you find the bulk of PC players.
I'm torn on this because while we do need competition in the PC Games Storefront scene, I don't really want a bunch of EGS exclusives that I need to sideload on my Deck or my PC. I much prefer the rich library environment of Steam games than the lacking library view of a non-Steam game shortcut.
0 Likes
Leahi84 4 hours ago
Man, they really are desperate aren't they? I don't think this will ultimately work either, so I guess they will be out of options after this other than maybe trying to sue Valve. I will never use the epic game store.
0 Likes
ElectricPrism 4 hours ago
@eggrole - "More competition and options are generally a good thing."
Epic is "competition" to Steam in the same way that a Moped is competition with a Luxary Car.
Statistically Consumers prefer Luxary Cars to Mopeds.
Their business model is cart before horse ass-backwards.
The consumers have the money.
Paying developers to fuck over consumers with exclusives just pissed everybody off royal. That strat might have worked on Consoles, but not on PC.
PC Gamers __REALLY__ don't like to be emotionally blackmailed and disrespected as if we were farm animals to be slaughtered for cash.
Epic is "competition" to Steam in the same way that a Moped is competition with a Luxary Car.
Statistically Consumers prefer Luxary Cars to Mopeds.
Their business model is cart before horse ass-backwards.
The consumers have the money.
Paying developers to fuck over consumers with exclusives just pissed everybody off royal. That strat might have worked on Consoles, but not on PC.
PC Gamers __REALLY__ don't like to be emotionally blackmailed and disrespected as if we were farm animals to be slaughtered for cash.
0 Likes
Mountain Man 3 hours ago
@eggroll
More competition can be a good thing as long as it's the right kind of competition. GoG is good competition for Steam because it has some unique advantages, namely the lack of DRM and the ability to download and archive full games. Epic, on the other hand, offers few if any advantages over Steam or GoG and has the big disadvantage that they are, in fact, anti-competitive and try to lock publishers into their ecosystem with exclusivity deals. So within that context, I want to see GoG succeed and Epic fail.
Last edited by Mountain Man on 2 May 2025 at 6:43 pm UTC
More competition can be a good thing as long as it's the right kind of competition. GoG is good competition for Steam because it has some unique advantages, namely the lack of DRM and the ability to download and archive full games. Epic, on the other hand, offers few if any advantages over Steam or GoG and has the big disadvantage that they are, in fact, anti-competitive and try to lock publishers into their ecosystem with exclusivity deals. So within that context, I want to see GoG succeed and Epic fail.
Last edited by Mountain Man on 2 May 2025 at 6:43 pm UTC
2 Likes
benstor214 2 hours ago
@eggrole - "More competition and options are generally a good thing."
"So let the anti-competitive store succeed."
Riiiight.
Last edited by benstor214 on 2 May 2025 at 8:21 pm UTC
"So let the anti-competitive store succeed."
Riiiight.
Last edited by benstor214 on 2 May 2025 at 8:21 pm UTC
0 Likes
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